As you may know, I collect photos of street lights for a hobby. Recently I received email from a man
in Sheffield County UK. It read

I wonder if you are aware of a very special sort of streetlight, the J E Webb Sewer Gas Destructor Lamp. Patented in 1895, it was a typically ingenious product of the Victorian drive to improve sanitation. Lamps are connected both to mains gas supply and to the sewers, the column acting as a sewer chimney and the heat of combustion drawing off potentially dangerous sewer gases and microbes to be destroyed at high temperature. Many hundreds were installed in British towns and cities and also exported across the world. I only know of 46 that survive, all in the UK, and 25 of them in my home city of Sheffield. They were especially suitable here, as the hilly terrain meant that there were many points in the sewer network where gases could be trapped. A few even still burn gas: 18 were converted to natural gas in the early 1980s, but since then they have been neglected so that only 4 are working today (there are also 2 or 3 gas-burners in other towns).

The good news is that Sheffield City Council has a project to renew all streetlighting, under which the surviving lamps will be refurbished. Less good is that it is proposed to replace the burners with LEDs, meaning the loss of an internationally-unique heritage of lamps which have burnt gas almost continuously for up to 100 years.

Attached are a couple of pictures which I hope you will find interesting. The Brincliffe Edge Road lamp was the first in Sheffield, installed in 1914. The Rural Lane lamp shows how good they can look when someone looks after them -- a private householder, in this case -- although unfortunately this one is no longer burning gas.

(9/10/18)

We will break into groups and look at some creativity exercises today.

A man walked into a bar and asked the barman for a glass of water. They had never met before. The barman
pulled a gun from under the counter and pointed it at the man. The man said "Thank you" and walked out. Why
should that be so?

Two brothers were having a drink in a bar.Suddenly one of the brothers got into a heated argument with the barman.
He pulled out a knife and, despite his brother's attempts to stop him, stabbed the barman in the chest. At the trial,
he was found guilty of assault with a deadly weapon and grievous bodily harm. At the end of the trial, the judge said,
"You have been found guilty of a vicious crime. However, I have no choice but to set you free." Why should that be so?

A traveler came to a small town. He had never visited it before, he knew no one there, and knew nothing about the
town or its inhabitants. He needed a haircut. There happened to be two barbershops close to each other on the main
thoroughfare -- the only barbershops in town. The man studied each of them with care. One shop was very neat and tidy.
Everything about it was smart. The barber was sweeping away the last traces of hair from the floor while waiting for his
next customer. The other barber's shop was very untidy. Everything looked rather run down and ramshackle. The scruffy
looking barber within was lolling on a chair waiting for his next customer. Both shops charged the same amount for a haircut.
After careful consideration, the traveler decided to go to the scruffy barber for his haircut. Why?

A woman had two sons who were born on the same hour of the same day of the same month of the same year. But they were not twins. How could this be so?

You can learn HTML and CSS through examples that you can edit in the browser.

If you are a member of the St. Louis County Library, you can access Lynda.com’s video tutorials for free. These tutorials cover a range of topics including web design. Please do look into this excellent resource as you may find it useful for all your IS courses: https://www.slcl.org/content/lyndacom.